Hal Varian: Profile

Hal R. Varian is the Dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a Professor in the Haas School of Business, a Professor in the Department of Economics, and holds the Class of 1944 Professorship. He is currently on leave from the University of California, Berkeley School of Information, and is Chief Economist at Google.

He received his S.B. degree from MIT in 1969 and his MA (mathematics) and Ph.D. (economics) from UC Berkeley in 1973. He has taught at MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan and other universities around the world.

Professor Varian is fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as Co-Editor of the American Economic Review, and as an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the Journal of Economic Literature.

Professor Varian has published numerous papers in economic theory, industrial organization, public finance, econometrics, and information economics. His current research involves the economics of information technology. In particular, he is investigating strategic issues in technology management, the economics of intellectual property, and public policy surrounding information technology.

He is co-author, with Carl Shapiro, of INFORMATION RULES: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Harvard Business School Press).

Speech Topics:

• Knowing the Rules
• Business Strategy for IT
• Mining the Deep Web for Economic Data
• Data Sharing & Integration
• Security & Privacy
• Semantic Web